Management of business and personal contact information is a vital part of every business-person's job. It is a long-standing tradition, world-wide, for business people (and personal acquaintances) to exchange business cards upon their first (and possibly subsequent) meeting. There currently exists a significant market for manufacturers of manual business card holders/files and for developers and retailers of software and electronic hardware products to manage personal and business contact information. The electronic systems are commonly referred to as PIM's (Personal Information Managers) or CMS systems (Contact/Customer Management Systems). The PIM and CMS systems vary in their functionality from small, credit-card sized electronic address books to large corporate-wide customer management systems.
All of the systems have one common flaw, however, in that the task of entering the original contact information is time consuming and error prone. The task of entering all the basic contact information from the business card into the PIM/CMS such as, for example, the card holder's name, address, phone and fax numbers, email address, etc. is by nature a labor intensive task. Because the task is manual, it is prone to data entry errors. Often times the errors are not realized until the user later extracts the data from the PIM/CMS and attempts to contact the card issuer and fails because, for example, a phone or fax number is wrong or a zip code has two digits transposed. Entry of contact data into a PIM/CMS is expensive because of the labor involved. The expense is compounded when errors are realized after the fact when mail is returned, faxes are not received in a timely manner or phone contact cannot be made. There exists therefore, a need for a system to reduce or eliminate the labor and errors associated with the manual data entry of contact information into a PIM/CMS.
Commercially available solutions to automate the data entry process of entering business contact information are limited. Today, the state of the art consists of optical card scanning devices. These devices such as the Smart Business Card Reader from Seiko and the CardScan Plus from Corex Technologies consist of an optical document scanner and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. The optical scanner scans the image(s) printed on the front of the business card and the OCR software attempts to determine which characters make up which fields of information. The software then attempts to place the data into the database of an attached PIM/CMS. This technology is expensive and error prone. Though less labor intensive than manual data entry it is often more error prone than hand data entry.
Another limitation exists for the business card issuer. A printed business card can convey only a limited amount of information. Face-to-face delivery of information is often the most effective advertising medium. The ability to hand-deliver an advertising message to a business or personal acquaintance is highly effective and a desirable marketing goal. Even with the state of the art in electronic and print advertising, there still exists a significant need for people to meet in person. The business card issuer is faced with the dilemma of wanting to print (convey) as much information as possible on a business card without the card becoming cluttered and confusing to the recipient. A partial answer to this dilemma is to print information on both the front and back of the business card (which presents a problem for optical card scanners) or to produce a card that folds in the middle, much like a book, thus providing multiple surfaces on which to print information. These solutions are expensive for the card issuer as printing costs can increase significantly and often annoying to the recipient. There exists, therefore, a need for a system that will allow a business card issuer to convey larger amounts of contact related information (than conventional business cards) to the recipient in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing (i.e. a business card that is not crowded with information), inexpensive to print and convenient for the recipient to manage.
In a business meeting, it is common for the participants to exchange advertising/marketing information. This advertising often takes the form of product brochures, service capability statements, product-line cards, videos, demonstration units, etc., in addition to the exchange of business cards. This process is expensive for the issuer (i.e. for the cost of the production, storage, and maintenance of marketing materials) and for the recipient who has to store the received literature, etc. in such a way as to make it readily accessible the next time it is needed. The recipient often files the business card in a manual card file or electronic PIM and the literature in a separate file which must be labeled and filed. This, again, is a manually intensive and expensive process for the recipient that often results in the literature/advertising information being disposed of or lost. Accordingly, there exists a need for a system that will allow the issuer of a business card to also actively convey targeted advertising/marketing information to a recipient in a manner that is cost effective and convenient for both the issuer and the receiver.
The Internet is fundamentally changing the way companies do business. One advantage of the Internet, especially for smaller companies, is that an advertiser can reach a potentially large audience simply by establishing a site on the World Wide Web. Unlike print advertising, electronic forms of advertising can be interactive and can often deliver more information to the viewer. A limitation and fundamental difficulty, however, is in attracting visitors to one's web site. Web advertising is a purely passive advertising method in which the customer must come to the advertiser, not visa versa. Search engines and cooperative web site advertising are common methods to attract visitors to an advertiser's web site. A common method for Internet advertisers is the “shotgun” approach whereby the advertiser pays for advertising space and time on the Web sites of many different business partners or “cooperative” web sites. The theory is that sooner or later, an interested prospect will eventually come across the advertiser's ad and take action to purchase the advertiser's product or service. A disadvantage to cooperative web site advertising is that it does not lend itself well to “targeted” advertising. It is also an expensive advertising method, especially for smaller companies who cannot afford to purchase ad space on high traffic web sites. Even if an advertiser can afford the ad space on a popular web site, advertisements are typically “rotated” through a site such that they are displayed on a periodic basis along with numerous other ads. As a result, it is highly likely that the advertiser's ad will not be displayed to each and every visitor to that web site. Often a more effective method of targeted electronic advertising which allows the advertiser to reach targeted prospective customers is for the advertiser to actively pursue their target audience by direct E-mail advertising. Direct E-mail advertising is a more active method which allows the advertiser to bring the message directly to the targeted recipient and is often less expensive than cooperative web site advertising. A disadvantage with direct E-mail is that many email service providers actively filter out “spam” or unsolicited email. Accordingly, there is a need for a method of electronic advertising and electronic advertisement delivery which allows for inexpensive delivery of electronic advertisements to a specifically targeted audience.
It is often difficult (or impossible) for advertisers to determine who is actually receiving and/or viewing their advertisements. Advertisers want to know the demographics of the viewers/recipients of their advertising. Statistics about the viewer/recipient of an ad such as when, where, and for how long they viewed the ad and the source of the ad (i.e. a retailer, staff sales person, business partner, or other such source) are desirable for advertisers. Information such as the viewer's job title, and company and how the viewer can be reached are also desirable pieces of information that are extremely difficult if not impossible for an advertiser to obtain without expensive surveys, etc. There exists, therefore, a need for a system that will allow advertisers to obtain detailed information about the viewer/recipient of advertising as well as the source and timing of the advertisement.
It is common for business partners to share in the costs of advertising. “Cooperative advertising”, as it is sometimes referred, often involves multiple advertiser teaming together. Often the “team” consists of a global or national advertiser and a local re-seller of a product or service. Often, a re-seller of a product or service will print the logo and company name of one or more cooperative advertisers on his/her business card perhaps in an effort to increase name recognition, etc. This often results in a potentially confusing or crowded looking business card. Accordingly, there is a need for a business card format that allows cooperative advertisers to place logos, etc. from one or more business partners (advertisers) on (or within) one business card without causing the business card to look crowded or to cause confusion with the recipient.